The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 481. 10 Disruptive Truths

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00:00:57.420 Hello, everybody.

00:01:10.460 So, what I did today was the culmination, or at least the culmination for now, of a sequence of talks that I've had with Vivek Ramaswamy,

00:01:19.700 who many of you know, perhaps the majority of you, that he was a contender on the presidential circuit on the Republican side.

00:01:27.820 A young man who came really as an unknown into the race, although he had quite a substantial history of accomplishment behind him.

00:01:36.520 And one of the things we've done with the podcast is track his progress, both as a candidate and also as a person, across the expanse of the presidential circuit.

00:01:48.380 And that's been extremely interesting and illuminating.

00:01:50.680 And he was quite successful.

00:01:52.960 And one of the consequences of that appears to be the case that he's entered the close circle of the fundamental contender for the presidency, now Donald Trump.

00:02:04.020 And so, what did we do in this discussion?

00:02:06.820 Well, one of the consequences of Ramaswamy's journey has been the modification and specification of his political and philosophical views.

00:02:17.720 And he's written a new book called Truths, The Future of America First, which launches on September 24th.

00:02:23.740 And so, we walked through that, we walked through the chapters, which detail out his attempt to put forward something like a conservative vision,

00:02:32.600 rather than the more standard conservative objections to the revolutionary vision of the progressives.

00:02:40.680 And so, we discussed his proposition that a state that's functional and a psyche that's functional for that matter has to be predicated on some allegiance to a higher power, a higher authority.

00:02:54.320 God is real is one of the insistences of his chapters in the new book, Truths, that there are two sexes.

00:03:04.800 We discussed the climate change hoax and what exactly it means that it's a hoax.

00:03:10.000 We talked about the value of subsidiary identity and responsibility with regards to the nuclear family and the nation,

00:03:18.100 the constitutional nation state as a source of abiding identity.

00:03:22.720 And then we walked through, as well, Ramaswamy's analysis of the current state of the Trump candidacy,

00:03:32.580 the surprising entry of RFK and Tulsi Gabbard and Elon Musk onto the stage in the last few weeks,

00:03:39.680 which is really a revolutionary development.

00:03:41.640 We got his thoughts about what that might imply and how a Trump presidency might conduct itself as it unfolds across the months post-election.

00:03:56.600 So, join us for all that.

00:04:00.040 Hello, Mr. Ramaswamy. It's good to see you again.

00:04:02.700 I guess we have two streams of conversation to undertake today.

00:04:06.940 The first pertains directly to a new book that you're releasing on September 24th, Truths, The Future of America First.

00:04:15.400 And I think we'll use that as a springboard for a more general discussion.

00:04:19.860 One of the agreements we made about a year ago was that you would check in with regular updates

00:04:25.760 with regards to the progression of your presidential candidacy, which has come to an end.

00:04:30.700 But there's many things to discuss with regard to its conclusion and to everything you've learned

00:04:37.260 and to what the future pathway looks like, let's say, in a Trump administration,

00:04:42.500 what role you might play in that and how you construe that in general.

00:04:48.000 But let's start with your book.

00:04:50.760 Tell us about Truths, The Future of America First.

00:04:54.260 Yeah, so it's one of the things—and it's great to see you again, by the way,

00:04:56.900 because we have mostly kept that pledge.

00:04:59.860 And I think it's been a fun forcing function for me to also, in conversations like this,

00:05:06.780 to take some space and reflect on what has been still a life-changing journey.

00:05:13.260 And I've enjoyed each of these times when I've been able to check in and to give myself that space has been useful.

00:05:18.600 This book is one of the things that gave me that occasion for reflection as well.

00:05:21.680 So I left the campaign at the start of this year, and one of the core tenets of my campaign, the slogan, was truth, actually.

00:05:30.820 But it caused me to reflect more deeply on, okay, what did that actually mean?

00:05:36.240 And what are the stakes for the future of this movement that I ran my presidential campaign as part of the America First movement?

00:05:43.040 What is the future of that movement, and how does it relate to the pursuit of truth?

00:05:46.300 And so that's what this book is about.

00:05:48.640 It goes through ten simple, hard truths, and I can tell you what some of those are.

00:05:54.520 But it's a little bit different than the books that I've written in the past.

00:05:57.560 I wrote Woke, Inc., which actually was our first basis to get to know one another, that first book.

00:06:02.360 And I've written—this is my fourth book I've written in the last three years.

00:06:05.640 But this one's different in that it's not actually an academic exposition of any kind.

00:06:09.560 It doesn't pretend to be.

00:06:10.440 It's designed to equip people with the kinds of points they can use in dinner table talking point conversation with friends on the left who they otherwise may not be interacting with.

00:06:22.720 Because I think one of the premises of the book is not just the content of it, but the methodology of how we get our country back, I think, is going to be through more open dialogue that we're not having amongst even friends and even family members for whom certain cultural or political topics have gone beyond the pale.

00:06:39.780 And so each chapter ends with five hard points or facts that you took away from that chapter.

00:06:45.140 I've never written a book that had that type of character to it as opposed to maybe more intellectual or academic bent.

00:06:52.160 But I think that this actually may be the most useful of the books that I will have written, I hope, because it would arm a lot of everyday citizens who agree with the points that I make in the book but may not have been able to distill them in ways that allow them to talk to their friends on the left or friends who are outside of political interest.

00:07:09.780 To be able to start the conversations at the dinner table that we're otherwise not having.

00:07:15.100 So it's not quite a how-to book, but it does have an element of guiding people to have difficult conversations with friends.

00:07:21.860 And I think that's a crucial part of this, with friends who they otherwise might have experienced distance with.

00:07:27.340 That's part of what this book hopes to accomplish as well.

00:07:30.040 Can we walk through some of those truths?

00:07:32.600 Do you want to detail some of them out so that people have a more clear understanding of what it is?

00:07:37.180 And also explain to us why you selected and focused on those?

00:07:42.060 Yeah, absolutely.

00:07:43.040 So the first one is God is real.

00:07:46.540 And I'll kind of go straight down the list of some of these.

00:07:49.240 God is real.

00:07:49.700 Yeah, yeah, do that, do that.

00:07:51.140 There are two genders.

00:07:53.260 The climate change agenda is a hoax.

00:07:56.380 That's an adaptation of what I used in my campaign, that fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity.

00:08:02.040 Another one is that reverse racism is racism.

00:08:05.080 Another is that an open border is not a border.

00:08:09.900 Another is that in a democracy, the people we elect to run the government ought to be the ones who actually run the government.

00:08:16.380 Or as I phrase it in the book, there are three branches of government in the United States, not four.

00:08:22.060 That's actually probably one of the most important chapters of the book, albeit the one that gets the most technical.

00:08:28.900 Another one is that nationalism isn't a bad word.

00:08:32.400 And that's a chapter whose thesis is that the elected leaders of a nation, including the United States, owe their first moral duty to the citizens of their nation.

00:08:43.760 So that explores, I think, a lot of the themes relating to the future of America first.

00:08:48.320 There's a chapter entitled Facts Are Not Conspiracies.

00:08:51.940 And, you know, again, these truths are written, and the chapter that follows that is the U.S. Constitution is the strongest and greatest guarantor of freedom in human history.

00:09:02.620 Another chapter explores the importance of the nuclear family.

00:09:05.720 I make the claim in the book that the nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.

00:09:10.240 So it gives you a sense for the kinds of truths that I expose in this book.

00:09:16.360 They're the kinds of things that had I said these things in the 1990s when I grew up in the American Midwest, I would have advised you to not buy this book because they would have been too obvious, right?

00:09:28.200 The things that are so obvious, they would have been banal to say.

00:09:32.240 The irony is now in the year 2024, many of those statements are controversial for the same reasons that they were banal 30 years ago.

00:09:41.120 And I think it is when the obvious becomes controversial that it is really a reminder of how far we've fallen as a country.

00:09:48.780 But I think that part of the approach of the book isn't to be angry about it, but to offer, let's just take the climate change agenda as a hoax chapter, for example.

00:09:56.020 That's one that I think will, and already amongst the people who have had these conversations, does make a lot of people upset when they hear that framing.

00:10:03.840 Are you claiming that climate change or the idea of it is a hoax?

00:10:06.020 No, I say the climate change agenda is a hoax because whether climate change is real or not is the wrong question.

00:10:12.860 And the chapter, I think, if I may say so, goes somewhat logically through not independently conducted research.

00:10:18.160 I'm not a climate scientist, but amalgamating the research of a lot of people who have made this their life's work to go through the different questions underlying climate change, right?

00:10:29.380 First of all, are global surface temperatures going up?

00:10:31.920 That's a reasonable question to ask.

00:10:33.900 The answer appears to be yes.

00:10:35.760 Is that related to man-made causes?

00:10:37.680 There's evidence suggesting that the answer to that question may be yes.

00:10:40.900 But now that we've gotten that out of the way, is there clear evidence or any evidence to suggest that that would propose an existential risk to mankind or the future of humanity?

00:10:51.660 And that's where I believe the answer is no, against the backdrop of hard facts that the book exposes from other researchers that have highlighted, folks you've talked to even, Bjorn Lomberg, for example, has highlighted eight times as many people die from cold temperatures as warm ones.

00:11:06.460 Well, then how do we synthesize that to a dinner table conversation that somebody is able to have with their friends who believe that climate change is the single most important issue that needs to be addressed, while not being a denier of the fact that global surface temperatures are going up, because they are, but getting to the heart of the matter of whether that actually has an adverse impact on the future of humanity.

00:11:26.000 So that's the kind of thing I try to do chapter by chapter in the book.

00:11:29.400 Right.

00:11:29.660 Well, that's part of that is-ought problem.

00:11:32.480 I mean, you know, we've been enjoined repeatedly over the past years to defer to the experts, but that deference presupposes that any given set of facts immediately displays for your perusal a set of policies that should be intelligently implemented.

00:11:50.800 And part of the problem with that hypothesis is, well, there's many problems with it, but one of the major ones is balance of risk, let's say.

00:12:00.360 I mean, one of the things that we did that was so catastrophic in our COVID panic was to prioritize a small potential increment in health over every other possible concern, short and long term, and what would you say, abdicate any political responsibility whatsoever with regard to balancing those risks.

00:12:23.500 And that certainly applies on the climate side, as even if there is a risk, the question is, well, what is the risk precisely, and what could we do to ameliorate it, and what would be the risks of that amelioration?

00:12:35.980 Like the large-scale transformation of the entire industrial enterprise is no minor undertaking.

00:12:42.360 And it's not at all obvious, as you point out, and even by the IPCC's own recognition, that that is the primary existential threat that confronts human beings, even on the environmental side.

00:12:57.040 And so, and this is completely independent of the reality of climate change, which I think is also questionable, and the potential danger of carbon dioxide, which in my way of thinking has not been convincingly established, especially given the massive data showing that carbon dioxide produces global greening, especially in semi-arid areas.

00:13:21.040 And that's like, it's a greening increase of 20%.

00:13:27.060 Like, when I look at this data as a scientist, and I am a scientist, I think that data point is so overwhelming, 20% increase in greening, especially in semi-arid areas, accompanied by a quite dramatic increase in crop productivity.

00:13:42.380 It's like, that single data point overshadows the significance of all the other data points, as far as I can tell.

00:13:49.900 And that's only one potential problem.

00:13:52.120 Okay, so you equip people with that chapter.

00:13:53.400 If I may just, on the climate point, just because this is near and dear to my heart as well, and it is an example of what I strive to do in this book, where, you know, folks like yourself are able to go into the actual hard data points and form your own conclusions.

00:14:07.920 But for the everyday citizen, that often, you know, people who have, you know, other callings may not have the same background that you do.

00:14:15.260 That can be a difficult thing to do when much of what you're served up comes through the filter of intermediary sources that actually are in many ways bastardizing their so-called synthesis of the underlying research.

00:14:26.340 So what I try to do here is at least demarcate several categories of questions.

00:14:29.840 The first you raise is, I think, one that many people are at least comfortable now with broaching.

00:14:33.600 The idea that, okay, even if climate change represents some kind of risk, is the cure worse than the disease?

00:14:39.440 That's the COVID-19 analogy.

00:14:42.360 And I contend with that, but that is well-trodden ground.

00:14:45.160 But one of the things I try to do in this book, and for example, in this chapter of the book as well, is to go beyond just that well-trodden accepted trade-off debate to actually even a deeper question of forget the costs of intervention.

00:14:58.940 Are we certain, or do we even have a basis to believe that a net increase of a small amount of global surface temperatures is indeed a bad thing for humanity, period?

00:15:12.580 This is irrespective of the question of intervention, right?

00:15:15.000 Because many people say that, oh, we still need fossil fuels.

00:15:18.120 We still need that.

00:15:18.820 And the cost of that, even though climate change is going to be bad for humanity, the cost of that would exceed the benefits.

00:15:23.140 That's one argument.

00:15:24.060 That's a totally separate argument, but an important one from the question of whether or not carbon dioxide-aided or abetted increases in global surface temperatures of under two degrees Celsius over the course of a century is bad or good.

00:15:37.780 And it turns out there are some effects that are arguably bad for humanity.

00:15:41.740 There are other effects which are more convincingly potentially net positive for humanity, such as the fact that more people die of cold temperatures than warm ones, such as the fact that the Earth is actually covered by more green surface area, as you noted, than it was even a century ago, especially in semi-arid areas, as you're right to note.

00:15:58.760 And then there's the deeper question of going even upstream of that.

00:16:02.760 So are we sure this is net bad for humanity?

00:16:05.060 Then there's the question of are we even sure that carbon dioxide is even the cause of the said phenomenon in the first place, when it's actually a much smaller percentage of the atmosphere, when we have relatively low levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere relative to most of Earth's history?

00:16:19.540 Those are also deeper questions on the underlying science to ask.

00:16:22.120 And so I find in many of these questions, we could talk about the border debate, we could talk about a number of the other issues, even in the gender ideology debates, where I think conservatives often will conflate those different questions, because we know in our gut what the right answer is, what the truth is.

00:16:38.320 But sometimes if our goal is to bring, as my goal here is, friends at the dinner table along, we can actually do better by understanding which of those strands a particular audience on the other side would find most persuasive or is most receptive to, and actually use that rather than the amalgam of the general point that sometimes we make in our political discourse.

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00:18:35.080 Right, right.

00:18:39.340 So it's partly a guide to civil political dialogue.

00:18:42.580 And I guess I'm curious, too, you know, why you picked the topics you picked.

00:18:48.080 So I'm going to walk through some of them in some detail because I think that's a useful exercise.

00:18:53.080 I mean, the first one you picked is really quite, what would you say?

00:18:59.800 Well, you couldn't have picked a more contentious or deeper opening salvo than your proclamation that God is real.

00:19:07.900 And so let me ask you this question in a relatively complicated way.

00:19:12.440 So I've written a new book called We Who Wrestle With God, which will be out in mid-November.

00:19:19.040 And one of the things I've noted about the culture war, say, that's reigning between the atheists and the believers, which is an element of the culture war, is that the phenomenon that we're discussing is ill-defined, right?

00:19:37.660 I mean, Dawkins, for example, who's probably the most famous living blatant atheist who's making a moral case for atheism.

00:19:46.980 You know, he parodies religious belief, especially of the Judeo-Christian type, as worship of the, you know, big daddy in the sky, which is virtually a quote from him, the sky daddy.

00:20:00.860 And part of the problem with that formulation is that it's simply not true.

00:20:07.220 Like the characterization of the divine in the Old and New Testaments, and this is also true of many literatures pertaining to the domain of religious phenomenology, is much more sophisticated than that.

00:20:24.880 It's not easily parodied, except in the manner that you can take an oversimplification of any complex belief and parody it.

00:20:34.620 And so the book I wrote is a walkthrough of the multiple characterizations of the divine in the standard Western canon.

00:20:43.300 And I'm formulating this way for a very particular reason with regard to you, because you start with your chapter about the reality of God.

00:20:55.860 The essential claim in the Western canon is that there's a unity underlying all things.

00:21:04.160 So you could think about that, for example, on the positive side, as the unity of beauty and truth and love, that there's a unity that underlies all things, that it's an active process, that unity, and not merely a static state, and that it's the kind of unity that is related to you in a manner that's best characterized as a relationship.

00:21:28.360 And I think those are the, now, it's also a sacrificial relationship, which has certain implications, but that's the basic argument.

00:21:36.740 And, you know, the counter-argument is that there is no underlying unity, that the virtues and the goods do not sum into something that's commensurate, and that you have no relationship whatsoever between you and the infinite.

00:21:53.020 And, like, I don't find those contrary hypotheses particularly credible, you know, are, like, for example, do we believe that there's no unity underlying, say, the manifestations of truth and beauty and justice, all the things that we consider positive virtues and good?

00:22:10.160 Are they not united under some rubric that approximates the good as such?

00:22:15.880 And are we not in some sort of relationship with that good?

00:22:20.000 I mean, it's very dangerous to occupy to what put forward the contrary suppositions.

00:22:27.500 It ends up tilting people in a nihilistic direction or a hedonistic direction, or it tempts them to worship power as an alternative uniting spirit, let's say.

00:22:38.580 So, anyways, that's how I've been conceptualizing this same question.

00:22:42.340 I'm curious about why you found it necessary and desirable to open your argument with this proposition that God is real.

00:22:50.440 What do you mean by that?

00:22:51.600 Yeah, well, I found it necessary because I think it's the most important of all.

00:22:54.920 I found it desirable in part because I was able to bring a dimension to this that is maybe complementary to the one that it sounds like you're bringing in your upcoming book.

00:23:04.520 And I will use that as a chance to say the only thing that I would not take issue with but expand on what you just said is that I don't think that that's actually limited to the Western philosophical worldview or to even the Judeo-Christian tradition.

00:23:18.780 And so, the reason I thought it was desirable for me to bring to bear here is I'm actually a religious Hindu, and I believe in exactly the worldview that you just described, that sense of unity, that rests actually at the heart of even the Hindu worldview, what's known as the non-dualistic worldview.

00:23:36.760 It's a philosophy that says the dualism, the separation between man and the supreme being, the separation between truth and beauty, non-dualism rejects the existence of that distinction.

00:23:47.580 And, you know, I think how to describe Hinduism is it's the reconciliation of man with the supreme being and his creator.

00:23:57.080 And I think that that is something that is a common thread through nearly all major world religions.

00:24:03.600 And I think that the common thread that that debate, this debate about between the atheist and the person of faith in each of those religious traditions and cultural backgrounds and backdrops where that debate has taken place, I think, falls into the trap of believing that because you can't understand something that that other thing no longer exists, which is actually a denial of the entire history of science as well.

00:24:27.360 Right. So the idea that your body is composed of cells that themselves contain, contain nucleic acids that all that offer the blueprint for your genetic makeup.

00:24:39.240 The fact that you couldn't see that does not deny its actual truth.

00:24:44.300 And I think that's the form of argument that I see with the atheist, not only in the American setting, but really for all of Western philosophical religious history.

00:24:53.500 But it turns out, even if you look to ancient arguments in places like India for people who had a non-dualistic worldview, you could call it a Hindu worldview of believing that there is a supreme being that resides and is unified with each man.

00:25:06.680 The fact that you can't see that or access that is not a valid argument on its own to deny its actual truth.

00:25:13.600 Well, let's look at that a minute from the scientific perspective, you know, because there's actually, it seems to me that one of the prerequisites, the presuppositions of formal science is at least the implicit recognition of something like a transcendent unity.

00:25:33.020 So, and here's what I mean by that is like any good scientist knows that his or her theories are insufficient, right?

00:25:43.540 That our grip, the grip that our knowledge has on the world is inadequate.

00:25:50.540 Now, what that implies is that there is a world that's a unity outside of our conceptualization, right?

00:25:58.320 So that's a belief in a transcendent reality.

00:26:00.540 So what you're doing when you do science is that you're subjecting your hypotheses to revision by the facts of the transcendent unity, right?

00:26:11.500 You put your hypothesis up for testing against the manner in which the real but as of yet unknown world will manifest itself.

00:26:21.780 And so you have to presume that there is a reality beyond your presuppositions.

00:26:26.460 And not only that, you have to presume that that reality is intelligible and that making the effort to make it intelligible is actually beneficial and good because, and it could be destructive.

00:26:39.840 I mean, you can discover things that are destructive, but the scientific mindset is predicated on the idea that the expansion of our knowledge in the direction of this transcendent unity is actually a net moral good because otherwise science would be an evil enterprise.

00:26:56.740 And so it seems to me, and I make this case in this book too, that the hypothesis of something like a transcendent unity is a necessary precondition even for science itself to find its purchase and move forward.

00:27:13.700 And the fact that the fact that the universities and the scientific enterprise essentially emerged out of the religious monastic tradition historically and technically is an indication of that fact rather than, you know, the kind of post-French Revolution notion that science and religion are somehow at odds.

00:27:34.000 I don't think that's historically accurate.

00:27:37.140 Now, there's one other thing too, and I'm interested in your comments about this.

00:27:41.140 See, the other reason that the proposition that you begin with, God is real, is necessary in a political sense, as far as I can tell, is that there's dawning realization over the thousands of years of human civilization that it's necessary, even for those who rule,

00:28:00.540 to be subject to be subject to some ethical framework or power that's beyond them.

00:28:07.680 So even among the ancient Mesopotamians, for example, they, and these are the oldest writings that we have, which is why I'm bringing them into the discussion.

00:28:16.220 The Mesopotamians realized that their emperor had to be an avatar of a god they knew as Marduk.

00:28:24.420 And Marduk was the god of attentive watching and truthful speech.

00:28:30.540 And so, insofar as the Mesopotamian emperor was an avatar of the spirit of careful attention, the attention that updates and learns, and truthful speech, he had the right to remain as emperor.

00:28:44.240 But insofar as he deviated from that moral path, which wasn't a characteristic of him, but a characteristic of something transcendent, if he deviated from that, he violated the, what would you say, the principles upon which his sovereignty was predicated.

00:29:02.640 And, you know, you have to ask yourself, how could it be other than dangerous for anyone to inhabit a political system where the presumption was that the ruler was the fundamental, final source of ethical evaluation?

00:29:19.960 I mean, there's no difference between that and a tyranny, obviously.

00:29:22.860 Absolutely. So, so, so much in what you said there, and again, it's another great example in parallel to our climate discussion now on this discussion about religion.

00:29:31.580 One of the things I try to do in this book is to make that accessible to, again, ordinary Americans who feel and who understand in their heart probably what you said, but may not have been able to parse it exactly in the manner that you have.

00:29:45.940 So let's just separate, as we did for the climate discussion, into a couple different categories of argument here.

00:29:50.540 And it's funny, I actually, this actually relates directly to the opening chapter of Truths as well.

00:29:56.100 I'm sure your book is a full book on it. This is a shortened version.

00:29:59.580 The first point about science itself being predicated, the scientific method itself being predicated on that unity, that's exactly right.

00:30:07.900 And so the observation I make to just make it simpler and more convincing to laypersons is that it is therefore not an accident every great scientist or many great scientists, you know, Albert Einstein, you go straight down the list, Blaise Pascal, some of the people who have made the greatest discoveries that have improved the frontiers of scientific understanding of the universe, did indeed believe in a single true God.

00:30:29.660 And I do believe that that is something that at least should surprise people who adopt the post-French Revolution worldview that somehow science and religion are at odds when some of the unambiguously greatest scientists, physicists, biologists, chemists have all arrived at the conclusion that there is some greater mover of this universe that we're unified with.

00:30:50.360 And the scientific method in the scientific method almost presupposes that exactly you're going to incrementally access knowledge that you don't have.

00:30:57.700 And the fact that you're able to do that in the realm of science is actually validating, not contradictory of the fact that you may do the same through religious experience.

00:31:06.300 So that's one category of argument, which is different from a separate, entirely different point, which is scientific knowledge is only one form of knowledge, right?

00:31:15.260 The idea that truth is limited to that which you can access through empiricism or through empirical testing is just a claim.

00:31:24.020 That's an assertion.

00:31:25.080 When in fact, empirical—

00:31:26.140 Well, it's also one that's scientifically—that's been scientifically invalidated in recent years.

00:31:32.100 Because, yeah, the advanced cognitive scientists in particular, the scientists of perception, understand that we have to prioritize our perceptions.

00:31:41.420 Because otherwise there's an infinite number of potentially relevant facts, and an infinite number is too many.

00:31:47.520 And so we use a value structure to prioritize our perception of facts.

00:31:52.400 And so there's no escaping from the value problem.

00:31:54.980 Right.

00:31:55.200 It's not even at the level of perception.

00:31:57.800 It's logically inescapable.

00:31:58.980 And then, again, in the interest of sort of making this accessible, again, you go to Albert Einstein.

00:32:05.280 He did not deduce his theory of relativity through empirical deduction or even through empirical observation.

00:32:12.820 He deduced it through what you could call a form of meditation, right?

00:32:15.940 Deep reflection on what must be true in the universe, accessing what we now accept as truth through a different mode than empirical deduction,

00:32:23.940 which was later validated through empirical testing that at least accounts for our current understanding of relativity.

00:32:30.720 So, A, you've got the fact that the scientific method itself relies upon the idea of some broader unity, as you call it.

00:32:37.300 B, the fact that the empirical deduction of truth is not the only path.

00:32:42.300 In fact, you have almost definitive proof that it can't be the only path to accessing truth and good historical examples to support that.

00:32:48.760 And that's all separate from the other category that you brought up, which is the utility of religious belief, whether that's in providing a constraint or a structure around the sovereignty of any particular kingdom or republic,

00:33:04.220 or whether it's even the fulfillment that most people are able to experience in their own lives.

00:33:09.020 And here, you may actually be making a case for even a Dawkins-like atheist.

00:33:13.460 I don't know what Dawkins' own views are, but an atheist believing that their kids would still be better off if their kids at least grew up being raised in a traditional religion and believing in God because it would result in—

00:33:23.720 Well, Dawkins has described himself recently as a cultural Christian, and I think it's exactly for those reasons.

00:33:29.900 Exactly. It's just the utilitarian, the utility-enhancing argument for it, for the same reason that you would believe that a republic like that of the United States or an old kingdom in Mesopotamia

00:33:40.980 would be better governed if its leader were—their sovereignty were derived from but also located within a broader sovereignty under God.

00:33:50.020 And so I think that those are four different categories of arguments.

00:33:53.560 And some are actually grounded in truth, others are grounded in utility, but all of which lead to, as you put it at the beginning, the desirability, but also the importance and necessity of starting the book with that exploration of why God is real and why that's important.

00:34:11.440 Let's turn, if you don't mind, let's turn to chapter two, which is that there are two sexes.

00:34:16.640 So I want to, again, ask you a relatively complicated question in that regard.

00:34:23.000 So one of the striking facts of human perception and conception is the primacy of sexual differentiation.

00:34:37.160 So the first thing I would say about that is that sex emerged about three-quarters of a billion years ago.

00:34:47.640 So it's a very, very old phenomenon, and it's very fundamental.

00:34:52.220 I mean, sex emerged, at least in part, to ensure that creatures could stay ahead of their parasites.

00:35:00.740 And I won't go into that in any great detail, but it turns out that sexual reproduction is more effective as a multigenerational strategy than parthenogenesis,

00:35:12.300 because creatures could, in principle, just produce identical copies of themselves.

00:35:16.740 But that turns out not to be biologically effective.

00:35:21.060 And so sex is very fundamental.

00:35:22.640 Now, one of the things that implies is that the ability to differentiate sexually is also of fundamental significance,

00:35:30.200 because creatures that fail to do that don't find a mate.

00:35:34.600 And so that's that on the evolutionary side.

00:35:37.340 And so even creatures that don't have a nervous system can differentiate practically and functionally between the sexes.

00:35:45.140 But there's more to it, Vivek, as far as I can tell, is that the notion of sexual differentiation as a primal fact of being,

00:35:55.240 I think you could make the case that that's the most fundamental of our perceptual categories.

00:36:00.600 Like, I think it's more fundamental than up or down or black and white or night and day.

00:36:08.200 And those are very fundamental conceptualizations, right?

00:36:11.040 And so what that implies is that if you can gerrymander the perception of sexual differentiation,

00:36:21.520 if you can do that for ideological reasons, if you can convince people to accept that distortion of reality,

00:36:28.480 there's no distortion of reality that they would be immune to in the aftermath of that violation.

00:36:36.060 So, you know, I mean, I thought about this very deeply since the entire notion of the gender spectrum has emerged into public consciousness.

00:36:45.360 And we've seen the devastating effects of that with regards to medical malpractice, for example.

00:36:51.840 I mean, the best data that I've been able to access now suggests that something approximating 10,000 minor women,

00:36:58.800 minor girls in the United States have had double mastectomies that have been paid for by insurance.

00:37:05.380 In the aftermath of this gender delusion that's possessed the broader culture.

00:37:12.900 And I think one of the things that the Democrats are most culpable for and in an unforgivable manner

00:37:19.240 is still maintaining their support for this view that gender is a spectrum and a continuum.

00:37:26.640 And, you know, it's interesting because, of course, people do vary substantially in their personalities.

00:37:35.900 And there are masculine and feminine personalities.

00:37:39.480 And they're not 100% aligned with the underlying sexual biology.

00:37:44.420 But that doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that the sexual categories are cultural constructs are unreal in any deep sense.

00:37:54.160 So, okay, well, so that's, I've kind of outlined the way that I've been perceiving that.

00:37:59.740 I'm curious about why you picked that as number two in your list of topics that need to be addressed.

00:38:06.000 And what brought this to your attention and what you think the problems and solutions are.

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00:39:17.880 Well, actually, after number one and number 10, there was no particular order to the rest other than make it for a good book.

00:39:25.420 So, actually, the climate change chapter came second.

00:39:27.480 This came a little bit down the line, but that's just a matter of organization in the book.

00:39:30.800 It's a foundational one for exactly the reason you lay out.

00:39:37.100 First of all, you want to trace the evolutionary heritage of gender or of sex, really.

00:39:42.740 It's exactly as you laid out.

00:39:44.620 And you could make the case of how foundational it is relative to other foundational attributes of living creatures.

00:39:50.160 But it is in the category of foundational, regardless.

00:39:54.460 One of the things I explore in this chapter is sometimes it's good to look at the exception that you would hear on the other side as the best argument against you or in my view.

00:40:02.360 And explore that because, you know, people are going to encounter that if they don't encounter it in our own discussion.

00:40:08.060 They're going to encounter it elsewhere.

00:40:09.520 So, let's take the phenomenon of intersex, as you're familiar, right?

00:40:13.440 So, this would be a rare set of genetic anomalies, chromosomal abnormalities, that result in somebody having, rather than two, normally, ordinarily, just for everyone's benefit, I'm sure most people are aware, two X chromosomes.

00:40:27.660 You're a woman.

00:40:28.640 An X and a Y chromosome.

00:40:29.940 You're a man.

00:40:30.320 That's the definitional distinction for sex on a chromosomal basis in human beings.

00:40:36.720 However, there are rare instances in which individuals are born with and able to survive and live lives approaching normal duration with XXY, XYY.

00:40:47.940 These run by names like Jacob syndrome or Klinefelter syndrome.

00:40:51.580 Now, the fact that we have historically and continue to still describe these as syndromes and the way that we treat them, historically even related to classifying them as syndromes, I think in many ways reveals that, okay, the fact that that exists and those people deserve to be treated with dignity.

00:41:12.800 And part of our societal approach for nearly all of history to treat them with dignity is to characterize that as a syndrome in a way that's able to be addressed reveals exactly the point that you were making, which is that it is still foundational.

00:41:25.240 The idea that we have otherwise ordinarily evolved to have two X chromosomes in the human race, you're a woman and an X and a Y, you're a man.

00:41:36.780 And so I think one of the things I also explored making this, again, part of the point of this book is to make it accessible to ordinary people in the context of otherwise contentious political debates they're having.

00:41:49.040 Let's not accept any of the premises that you and I have just talked about here.

00:41:52.200 Let's not say that you have to subscribe to that out of the gate or you haven't studied evolutionary biology to be convinced of it or maybe that doesn't matter to you.

00:41:58.160 It should be at least a little bit of a mystery, a little curious at the very least, that the very now umbrella political movement and cultural movement, the LGBTQIA, there's many letters there, so they put a plus at the end, that that LGBTQIA plus movement at once asks you to espouse contradictory claims on this question.

00:42:18.780 So on one hand, that the very movement, this umbrella movement that told you that the sex of the person you're attracted to is hardwired on the day you're born.

00:42:30.240 And by the way, that was a central claim of the gay rights movement.

00:42:33.000 And it was a central claim of the legal argument for why gay rights count as civil rights, that it's an immutable characteristic.

00:42:39.180 The very people who said that the sex of the person you're attracted to on the day you're born also now require you to believe that your own gender or even in some constructs, your biological sex is completely fluid over the course of your life.

00:42:53.740 Now, you can't believe both of those things at once, but it becomes even less credible.

00:42:58.400 Now, let's just go one layer deeper.

00:43:00.640 That paradox is even more perplexing when you're asked to believe this against the backdrop of there being no gay gene, there's no gay chromosome, but yet that's the attribute that you have to believe is hardwired on the day you're born or else you're a bigot.

00:43:16.660 And yet the attribute for which you do have two definitive, measurable, imageable, vikaryotyping, empirically discernible, you think about even the chapter of God is real and people who hold empiricism as even their false God.

00:43:32.020 Fine, apply that here.

00:43:33.500 A discernible, empirically observable reality.

00:43:36.900 And yet to say that that's the attribute that is actually totally mutable over the course of your life, while the one that had no genetic or chromosomal basis, the sex of the person you're attracted to, is the one that somehow had to be immutable.

00:43:49.300 So it becomes serially, I think, more and more ridiculous or at least untenable to adopt those contradictory assumptions at once.

00:43:57.240 To say that maybe you could believe one of those things or you could believe the other of those things.

00:44:01.040 But the postmodern demand is that you believe both of those things at once, which is something that even for somebody who isn't, you know, maybe as drawn to the underlying biological or evolutionary historical truth, could at least acknowledge the hypocrisy of that for the purpose of civil dinner table conversation, which again is part of the purpose of my book, to make some of these concepts a little bit more accessible.

00:44:25.720 I think it points to the fact that the argument isn't the issue.

00:44:32.180 Like the issue, as far as I can tell, is something like, let's walk through it a little bit and see if we can formulate it.

00:44:39.860 It's something like the presumption that I am going to gerrymander my perceptual and cognitive categories such that at any given moment, I have maximal freedom to pursue whatever form of gratification, sexual and otherwise, that might come to mind.

00:45:01.900 And so if that's my goal, and I think that is the goal of the hedonistic left, is to justify that attitude of pleasure, immediate pleasure seeking at the expense of everything else, then the logical contradictions don't matter.

00:45:19.700 And so if that means sometimes assuming that everything is radically socially constructed, so that any constraint placed upon me is just an arbitrary manifestation of the tyrannical patriarchy, well then I'll accept that when it suits my desire to explore my hedonistic proclivities.

00:45:42.120 And if it means in other circumstances that I have to accept the idea of immutability with regards to sexual attraction, I'll also do that happily because the real game here is, I think, what's increasingly on display in the pride parades, which is not so much a celebration of the freedom to love, which is what the democratic good thinkers insist upon.

00:46:05.460 But the freedom to pursue any form of gratification whatsoever, free from any possible constraints of future or social orientation.

00:46:18.440 I mean, that's what explains the willingness, I think, to swallow these contradictions, because they aren't contradictory at that deeper level.

00:46:27.180 If your desire is that your desires are gratified immediately, regardless of any other consideration, then there is no contradiction at that level of analysis.

00:46:37.100 And so if we're to then connect a common thread through all three of the topics we've discussed so far, and we're going through in no particular order in the different chapters of my book, and so be it, but let's just connect these three, right?

00:46:49.780 We've talked about climate, we've talked about religion, the claim that God is real, and now this notion, our conviction, the truth that there are two genders based on two sexes.

00:47:02.200 And I think a common thread exists there where your point is logic was never really the point or argument was never really going to be the mode of persuasion in the first place.

00:47:11.500 What are these new, this new climate change agenda and the LGBTQIA agenda?

00:47:17.280 What's really at the heart of it is they really do have the characteristics of actually, to bring it full circle, modern religions, right?

00:47:24.100 And so when you stop believing in the real thing, you're going to believe in alternative religions instead, or the idea of hedonism as an end in itself.

00:47:32.960 That is the ultimate false idol or the false god.

00:47:36.780 Whether you believe that if there isn't some sort of other controlling and constraining demand on how human beings are supposed to behave through a moral order and endowed upon us by God,

00:47:46.920 then you will believe in a different constraining principle imposed on human beings by the climate.

00:47:54.100 So I do think that that goes to this native human need for belief in higher purpose, belief in meaning, belief in identity.

00:48:03.520 Well, that's probably something, well, it's probably something like the irresistible force of the quest for a unifying hypothesis.

00:48:15.780 Yes.

00:48:16.140 Right.

00:48:16.840 I mean, we could make that, you know, the case you laid out, and I think this is genuine, is that there's no escape from a belief structure.

00:48:26.760 That's right.

00:48:27.840 Because, and that's partly, imagine that that's partly because you have to conceptualize your beliefs in relationship to one another,

00:48:35.520 and you have to do that in something resembling a hierarchical manner, because some things you believe have to be primary compared to other things that you believe.

00:48:45.100 You know, like you value your wife more than some random woman on the street, for example, which indicates a priority of value.

00:48:52.660 Now, you can debate whether or not you should do that, but you can't debate that you do do that.

00:48:58.700 So, let's say that people are driven by necessity to organize their beliefs coherently and hierarchically,

00:49:07.220 and that implies that there's going to be competitions between different hierarchies of belief,

00:49:12.320 but that there's no escape from the necessity of a hierarchy of belief, partly because in the absence of such a hierarchy,

00:49:19.020 you're just confused and aimless, which is very uncomfortable and distressing psychologically, and also very impractical.

00:49:27.060 And so, then the question becomes, well, what are the foundations going to be of that hierarchical belief?

00:49:34.240 And you're pointing to something like allegiance to a transcendental unity in the classic sense that's associated with, say,

00:49:43.580 with the mainstreams of religious thought that characterize mankind.

00:49:48.960 And what seems to happen is that in the absence of that, alternatives emerge that are pathological,

00:49:55.980 and one would be the worship of power.

00:49:58.140 And you certainly see that with the postmodern worship of power, because people like Foucault,

00:50:04.200 he's the best example of this, and certainly it was characteristic of Marx,

00:50:08.980 make the presumption that power is the fundamental motivator.

00:50:12.520 And it is a unifying force of, although it's pathological in the extreme, in my estimation.

00:50:17.840 But you also see in classic accounts, the proclivity for people to degenerate in a hedonistic direction when they lose their moral guidance.

00:50:26.700 And so, for example, in the story of Moses, the Exodus story, when Moses departs from the lost Israelites to go to receive the Ten Commandments,

00:50:37.900 they're left under the control of Aaron, and Aaron is Moses' political wing.

00:50:44.820 And so, you could think of him as someone who's only beholden to the whims of the people.

00:50:50.880 So, he's a populist. That's another way of thinking about it.

00:50:54.640 So, the transcendental guide disappears, and all that's left is the populist representative of the people.

00:51:01.520 And what happens in the Exodus story is that the Israelites immediately degenerate into worship of the golden calf,

00:51:09.040 which is something like orgiastic materialism, because they end up dancing naked in an orgiastic manner,

00:51:17.360 in a drunken orgiastic manner, and worshipping something like the golden calf, which is a symbol of material wealth.

00:51:24.560 And so, one of the implications there is that in the absence of a transcendent orientation,

00:51:29.780 the populist proclivity is going to be the demand for the gratification of immediate desire.

00:51:39.360 And, of course, that makes a certain amount of sense, right?

00:51:41.660 Because, obviously, we're motivated to requite our immediate desires.

00:51:48.300 You have to have a reason not to do that that's a higher reason, right?

00:51:53.820 Just like you have to have a reason to mature, or you have to have a reason to forego gratification.

00:51:59.000 So, of course, that's how a society would degenerate.

00:52:01.700 And I would say, also, the reason it tends to degenerate in the direction of power,

00:52:07.180 which is somewhat different than hedonism, is that the purpose of power is the gratification of hedonistic desire, right?

00:52:14.240 Because if I want to gratify myself, and I have power, I can force you to comply,

00:52:20.400 and you can become an agent of my whims.

00:52:22.460 And so, that's where you get that dance between the hedonists and the tyrants.

00:52:28.760 And so, those are the cataclysmic forces that beckon and destabilize in the absence of something

00:52:35.960 like an upward-oriented transcendental subjugation.

00:52:43.080 That's how it looks to me, anyways.

00:52:45.300 And that seems to be akin to the argument that you're making, at least implicitly,

00:52:49.600 in at least those chapters of your book.

00:52:52.020 And if I may, just to sort of bridge this to actually, it actually is a perfect bridge to

00:52:58.600 much of the rest of the book, is that, yes, you can't escape belief.

00:53:03.840 That is a common thread through the book.

00:53:06.100 I mean, the book is called Truths.

00:53:07.740 This isn't a truth that is a chapter of its own, but it's a common thread through the entire rest of them,

00:53:12.280 which is that you can't escape a belief or a belief structure.

00:53:17.480 And so, whether we're talking about LGBTQIAism or racial wokeism, that's a chapter that we cover in the book as well,

00:53:23.620 or the climatism, you can't escape belief.

00:53:26.900 So, I start with the big one, right?

00:53:28.300 God is real.

00:53:29.040 That's an alternative belief structure, which is grounded, I believe, in truth,

00:53:32.200 but also even from a self-fulfillment perspective, provides you at least greater fulfillment

00:53:37.720 than these other false idols, these other golden calf substitutes.

00:53:41.800 But that may be difficult for some people who are, especially those who may not be so inclined,

00:53:47.420 or, you know, you have to be under a certain condition or a certain state of mind and being

00:53:53.280 to be able to open your mind to the possibility of believing in God if you previously didn't.

00:53:57.440 And that's not something you're going to, I don't think, through a book, persuade someone into anyway.

00:54:02.500 So, one of the things I offer in the book is alternatives, right?

00:54:05.500 Maybe you're not going to fill the whole vacuum in your heart or the whole vacuum of belief that you require

00:54:10.480 that's otherwise filled by climatism, COVID-ism, woke-ism, and transgenderism with, you know, the following.

00:54:18.420 Maybe God is the most important one.

00:54:19.980 But absent that, there are other proxies.

00:54:23.680 Proxies may be the wrong word, but other substitutes.

00:54:25.580 And so, this relates to some of the other chapters that I cited to you.

00:54:27.880 The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.

00:54:30.980 That, in some ways, is at least a belief in a structure, a belief in the importance of family,

00:54:35.220 a belief in a grounding conviction of your identity.

00:54:37.680 This chapter on nationalism isn't a bad word.

00:54:41.020 That's at the heart of it, is that a civic identity or a national identity can also provide

00:54:46.200 that sense of belief that is necessary anyway.

00:54:49.580 But you may as well ground it in something that is, A, true, but, B, also is more time-tested

00:54:55.900 in what is able to provide a human being with his sense of fulfillment and purpose.

00:55:02.280 And so, in some sense, that is better than I probably conceptualized, if I was to rewrite the

00:55:06.800 introduction to my book.

00:55:08.500 After this conversation, it might actually be a better introduction, so I wish we had

00:55:12.440 talked earlier.

00:55:12.980 But that is exactly what the book evinces through these chapters.

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00:56:32.860 Well, so let me outline something else from Exodus that's extremely interesting in that regard.

00:56:38.960 So there's a time when the Israelites are lost and wandering, when they set up Moses as a judge.

00:56:50.220 And so there are fractious and squabbling because they don't have the capacity for self-governance,

00:56:56.080 being recently freed slaves who are now lost in this expansive, chaotic wasteland, right?

00:57:03.080 This post-tyrannical domain of confusion, which is what the desert signifies.

00:57:10.300 And so they really try to make Moses into a new pharaoh.

00:57:14.540 And so they set him up as judge.

00:57:16.780 And so they bring all the disputes.

00:57:19.180 They can't reconcile themselves to his attention and ask him to rule.

00:57:25.580 And Moses' father-in-law comes along, a man named Jethro, reenters the picture.

00:57:30.580 He's a good man, a good foreigner.

00:57:32.540 And he says to Moses, you have to stop doing this because you're going to be reestablished as a new pharaoh.

00:57:40.680 And so you'll have all the problems of the previous tyrant.

00:57:44.100 But also by depriving your people of the necessity of adjudicating their own disputes,

00:57:50.700 you infantilize them and they'll stay as slaves.

00:57:54.140 And so that's a very interesting and cogent critique.

00:57:57.600 And so what Jethro tells Moses to do, this is a key, what would you call it, occurrence in the history of political thought.

00:58:09.700 Because the issue that's being addressed in a very compact form is, what's the alternative to the tyrant and the slave, right?

00:58:19.620 You could think about those as extreme forms of social organization, tight organization under a single power and no organization whatsoever.

00:58:30.140 And what Jethro tells Moses to do is to divide his people into groups and make a hierarchy.

00:58:37.900 So put everybody in groups of 10, have those 10 elect a leader from amongst themselves,

00:58:45.720 then to make a group out of those leaders and then to take the leader leaders and make another pinnacle above them

00:58:52.680 and to do that all the way up to groups of 10,000 and then to adjudicate the disputes from the bottom up,

00:59:02.060 letting only those that can't be adjudicated at a lower level get to Moses.

00:59:07.320 So it's the construction of a hierarchy that's called the principle of subsidiarity.

00:59:12.720 And so it's the formulation of a subsidiary hierarchy of responsibility and identity that's the alternative to the slave and the tyrant.

00:59:23.580 And you're touching on that in your formulation.

00:59:26.420 This is something we've been dealing with formally at this Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Organization.

00:59:33.060 That's an attempt to bring conservatives and classic liberals together all around the world.

00:59:38.620 And so, you know, you're highlighting certain elements of those, that subsidiary identity, which is not only a belief, right?

00:59:46.780 It's a mode of being in the world.

00:59:48.640 Like to have a family isn't only to believe that a family is valuable.

00:59:52.860 It's also to have a family, right?

00:59:55.500 And to be nested in that.

00:59:56.720 And one of the points that you're making that you appear to be making is that, well, if you're looking for an identity,

01:00:04.740 father, sibling, son in a well-structured nuclear family actually provides that, right?

01:00:12.520 It's who you are.

01:00:14.080 It shapes the way you see the world.

01:00:16.500 And it offers you a set of meaningful responsibilities.

01:00:20.920 But it's not only the nuclear family, right?

01:00:23.820 It's the town.

01:00:25.700 It's the city.

01:00:26.660 It's the state.

01:00:27.540 It's the nation.

01:00:28.980 And so there's a place for the nation as well.

01:00:32.280 You know, the problem with the globalist view, which is that it's disenfranchised, hyper-individualistic, autonomous individuals,

01:00:43.780 bereft of any social structuring, is that you end up with the slave tyrant problem immediately,

01:00:50.240 is that when you eradicate all the subsidiary structures from people's identity,

01:00:56.360 you turn them into slaves and you turn the ruler into a tyrant.

01:00:59.960 And that's the danger of organizations like the WEF or the UN or the EU, for that matter, right,

01:01:06.040 that push this identity that's too extreme.

01:01:10.900 Hey, there's no intermediary social institutions.

01:01:14.720 There's only individuals and the king, the pharaoh, the tyrant.

01:01:20.460 And then you end up with this slave tyrant dichotomy and everyone is lost and aimless and without identity.

01:01:26.300 And so you are, I think your point that what you're doing with these intermediary structures,

01:01:32.720 nuclear family, a constitutional republic, and a national identity, is flesh.

01:01:40.240 It's not so much a substitute for the orientation towards the divine.

01:01:44.940 It's the fleshing out of what that would mean practically in how you constitute yourself as an individual.

01:01:52.120 This is what the conservatives have to offer in part, right?

01:01:54.840 Because the atomized liberals tend to think of everybody as only individual.

01:02:01.680 But when you start to understand that your identity is also that of the nuclear family

01:02:06.500 and also that of the nation, let's say, and the state,

01:02:09.200 then that gives you a place and a set of tasks to undertake that are nested underneath the transcendent,

01:02:20.500 but also meaningful manifestations of identity.

01:02:25.400 That's exactly right.

01:02:26.640 And so this is the heart of really what the book is about.

01:02:30.600 When I talk about truths, this is the heart of a truth that permeates all of the other ones.

01:02:37.000 So you used a couple of so many interesting things, what you said there.

01:02:39.540 You used the word subsidiarity.

01:02:41.860 You can use the word constitute as it relates to an individual.

01:02:44.460 I'll pick up on that verbal cue to cite something else different but relates to the same verbal cue,

01:02:52.480 which is Jethro and Moses, that principle of subsidiarity of organization is what many scholars

01:02:57.300 have at least tied and even attributed in some cases to Article 4, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution

01:03:03.820 and where it actually finds its own roots is actually none other than that through that principle

01:03:09.000 of subsidiarity that Jethro imparted to Moses, both in the system of federalism, also in the

01:03:15.320 system of how our own district courts to appellate courts to the Supreme Court is actually set up

01:03:20.880 in the United States.

01:03:21.680 And so whether as a historical parallel or even for certain people who participate in the

01:03:27.160 Constitutional Convention, whether they had in mind actually Jethro and Moses' structure

01:03:31.160 of their subsidiarity, it's actually deeply woven into the fabric and founding of the United

01:03:35.680 States.

01:03:36.220 Some people often will say we're founded on Judeo-Christian values, and that's what our

01:03:41.420 Constitution was written in the backdrop of.

01:03:42.940 People say these things, but without actually necessarily understanding some of those deeper

01:03:47.640 linkages.

01:03:48.160 The details.

01:03:48.700 Exactly.

01:03:49.160 And that's one of the things I also explore in this book.

01:03:52.100 Now, on this principle of subsidiarity, look, I think that there is also an opportunity for,

01:04:00.720 and our goals in our respective books here may be slightly different, and mine is different

01:04:04.860 here from even some of my prior books.

01:04:06.800 My goal here is actually very pragmatic, right?

01:04:09.080 In that even for those who may not get there on God or on nation, they could at least get

01:04:17.300 there on family, right?

01:04:18.600 The idea that you are a brother, a father, a husband, and then that grounds you.

01:04:23.320 Great.

01:04:23.500 The nuclear family is, I make here, the greatest form of governance, certainly greater than a

01:04:28.460 government.

01:04:28.760 And then maybe you get there on family, then you can go a little bit further, that I'm

01:04:32.600 a citizen of this nation, not any other nation, not some nebulous global citizen fighting climate

01:04:38.260 change nebulously somewhere, and that's why I explore climate in the same book.

01:04:41.840 But I'm a citizen of this nation, in my case, the United States of America.

01:04:45.420 That means something.

01:04:46.280 Here's what that means.

01:04:47.080 Here's what that civic ideal is really based on.

01:04:49.200 And my pride in that national identity, if you call that a form of nationalism, that need

01:04:53.340 not be a bad word.

01:04:54.620 So maybe we get there with that.

01:04:55.980 And then, look, you have a vacuum in your heart.

01:04:59.140 Have you filled the whole thing with your family identity and your national identity?

01:05:02.620 Maybe not.

01:05:03.740 But if you've even partially filled the cup, you're diluting a lot of the poison that

01:05:08.100 otherwise filled it to irrelevance.

01:05:09.940 And that itself is partial progress, even if we don't make it all the way to people who

01:05:13.560 I may not win over with a single chapter dedicated to God is real.

01:05:16.300 Okay, maybe we do win some people over with that.

01:05:18.500 But even if we don't, I want to leave room.

01:05:21.520 It's a very practical project for partial victories along the way.

01:05:25.320 And I think that in some ways, that's one of two mistakes I'd like to identify, I think,

01:05:30.580 in the conservative movement is we haven't given ourselves or maybe not ourselves, but

01:05:35.960 our fellow citizens the space for those partial victories.

01:05:40.440 And I think the more we provide the space for those partial wins, the more likely we are

01:05:45.540 to eventually progress to what a fuller victory looks like.

01:05:49.480 The other issue I see with the conservative movement is here, we often are very good at

01:05:56.900 identifying and lambasting the poison that fills the cup, right?

01:06:03.800 The alternative belief structures that we adopt.

01:06:08.480 But I think without, certainly amongst conservative political leadership in recent years, I would

01:06:13.500 say this, probably for the better part of the 21st century, we're not good enough at

01:06:18.660 identifying what the alternative beliefs are that we, alternative vision is that we actually

01:06:24.240 subscribe to.

01:06:24.840 So we know what we're against, but what exactly do we stand for?

01:06:27.820 So we spend a lot of our airtime.

01:06:29.760 If you just look at, I don't know, conservative media, right?

01:06:32.120 And you look at race, gender, sexuality, and climate, how much time do we spend talking about

01:06:38.220 those topics versus talking about the inherent value of each individual, the inherent value

01:06:44.020 of the family, the nation, and God?

01:06:47.060 And I think that there's a vast disparity where we actually are doing far less to defeat the

01:06:53.660 ideologies or dogmas of race, gender, sexuality, and climate by confronting them directly than

01:06:59.420 we might by actually reviving individual family, nation, and God.

01:07:03.580 That's not to say that there isn't a time and place for directly confronting a threat and

01:07:07.560 fighting it head on.

01:07:09.700 I think that there's a time and place for that.

01:07:12.380 And I think that that's necessary at times.

01:07:14.620 But it is not the way in which we're going to restore the kind of order we miss in postmodern

01:07:22.680 America or the postmodern West.

01:07:24.720 I think that that will require doing the harder work of saying, it's not just what we're against,

01:07:29.000 but what do we actually affirmatively stand for?

01:07:32.120 And I see that as missing when I think about the future of America first.

01:07:34.960 One of the hard truths that permeates the book as well is that is an abject failure of the

01:07:39.940 modern Republican Party.

01:07:41.060 I think it is a damning indictment of the modern conservative movement.

01:07:44.740 And I hope what I do through this book is pave a path for what that future conservative

01:07:49.480 movement can be resurrected to actually accomplish.

01:07:53.540 Yeah.

01:07:53.740 Well, that's very much akin, as I said, to what we're trying to do with this ARC organization.

01:07:57.760 And for exactly the same reasons is that, you know, the conservatives are frequently criticized

01:08:03.280 for being reactionary for their objections, let's say, to the visionary proclivity of the

01:08:10.960 left, but have been remiss repeatedly in defending and fleshing out an alternative vision.

01:08:18.720 And as you said, it's become time for the obvious to be restated.

01:08:22.280 One of the constant criticisms of my work, writing and lecturing for that matter, is

01:08:28.860 that, you know, while Peterson does nothing but state and explain the obvious, but it

01:08:33.280 is the case that in times of crisis, it is precisely the role of conservatives to make

01:08:40.000 a case for what is so deeply rooted in people's psyches that it's foundational and to defend that.

01:08:47.120 That's exactly what conservatives do.

01:08:49.280 That is their role.

01:08:50.960 And so, visionary conservatives shine a light on the true pathway forward that's grounded

01:08:58.200 in the appropriate guiding traditions of the past.

01:09:01.920 And it certainly looks like that's what you're doing in this book.

01:09:04.600 Let me turn our attention in the time we have left over to something that's more, well,

01:09:11.560 more political and more personal at the same time.

01:09:14.420 Now, you spent a lot of time on your presidential campaign, which was quite successful, all things

01:09:20.480 considered, given how relatively unknown you were as a political actor and the complexities

01:09:27.700 of the current political situation.

01:09:29.580 And I'm very curious about the consequences of that.

01:09:35.380 I mean, I did note that, you know, there was a fair amount of...

01:09:38.760 I'm wondering what your relationship is with the powers that be on the Republican side at the moment.

01:09:47.580 I mean, we've seen Trump make some remarkably interesting moves in the past few weeks.

01:09:54.140 I mean, the fact that he's aligned himself with Tulsi Gabbard and RFK, and by all appearances,

01:10:00.520 is Elon Musk, who agreed yesterday to head something like a commission on governmental efficiency,

01:10:07.580 which would be...

01:10:09.020 I mean, this is...

01:10:10.260 The radicalness of this can hardly be overstated, right?

01:10:13.640 I mean, RFK wants to...

01:10:16.320 What?

01:10:17.260 He wants to rekindle or reformulate the health and food distribution systems.

01:10:24.000 Like, I mean, that's a major undertaking.

01:10:26.200 And I think he's absolutely right about the health crisis that besets us.

01:10:30.800 I mean, obesity and diabetes are a plague of such catastrophic proportions

01:10:36.680 that they make any risk from climate change appear, like, absolutely trivial by comparison.

01:10:43.680 Insanely trivial.

01:10:45.040 But it's radical.

01:10:46.700 And while Elon Musk is a radical sort of character,

01:10:49.640 and Tulsi Gabbard, again, she fits the same...

01:10:54.760 She's subject to the same descriptive terminology.

01:10:58.100 And it's also interesting that all three of those people are ex-Democrats, right?

01:11:02.520 Right, that's what I think makes it most interesting.

01:11:03.880 Which you could also say about Trump.

01:11:05.100 Yeah.

01:11:05.640 You know, it's not like Trump is the world's most obvious conservative.

01:11:09.500 Quite the contrary.

01:11:10.580 So I'm curious about what you make of what's happening around Trump at the moment,

01:11:16.040 and around Kamala Harris, too, for that matter.

01:11:18.860 Because there's also evidence that her stance has become substantially less radical and more conservative.

01:11:26.720 Now, you can be skeptical and cynical, and maybe you should be, about how much of that's just surfaced.

01:11:31.540 But the Democrats did shut out the radical leftists at the convention, to a large degree.

01:11:37.880 And much of what Harris has been pushing is much more mainstream Democrat than what you might have expected, for example,

01:11:48.020 if the people like AOC or Rashida Tlaib had got the upper hand, the real radicals in the Democratic Party.

01:11:57.000 Okay, so what do you make of what's happening around Trump?

01:12:01.460 How do you feel about it?

01:12:02.800 What potential role are you playing, and might you play in the future in relationship to that?

01:12:08.740 And what do you have to say about what's happening with Kamala Harris and the reconfiguration of the Democrats?

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01:13:14.000 Prouts.

01:13:14.740 Well, look, everything you just laid out, I think, accentuates an increasingly obvious truth,

01:13:20.580 which is that the real divide in this country is not between the Republican Party and the Democrat Party.

01:13:26.800 As those words have become less meaningful, you have multiple former Democrats who you named,

01:13:32.140 Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK, and by the way, somebody who formerly identified as Democrat as well was Donald Trump,

01:13:38.640 now looking at the world in a very different way.

01:13:42.980 On the other hand, you have Kamala Harris in her sprint.

01:13:46.080 It's not even a gradual run.

01:13:47.700 It's a sprint towards the center of traditional political content.

01:13:52.960 I think what we're actually seeing is a different divide.

01:13:56.140 It is a divide between the managerial class and the everyday citizen.

01:14:00.600 So I'll start with Kamala for a second here.

01:14:02.940 I don't think the right spot-on critique of Kamala is that she's a communist, right?

01:14:07.680 The policies she's advocated for in the past certainly would vindicate that characterization.

01:14:12.300 She favors taxes on unrealized capital gains, single-payer health care system.

01:14:16.520 She has favored bans on fracking, bans on offshore drilling.

01:14:20.240 She was a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal so much so that she wanted to end the filibuster in the Senate.

01:14:23.980 We go straight down the list of that history, and I've done that in other places.

01:14:27.500 But as you say right now, sincerely or not, those are not the views that she's espousing at the moment for the most part.

01:14:33.160 So it's less that she is a communist or a socialist.

01:14:37.960 I think that's almost giving her too much credit.

01:14:40.000 I think that that gives her the credit of being an ideologue, which I don't think she is.

01:14:43.740 I don't think she's particularly ideological.

01:14:46.020 I think she, like Biden, as Biden proved to be anyway, is really just another cog in a machine, right?

01:14:53.740 I think that this is part of—I think the more Republicans see ourselves running against a candidate,

01:14:58.160 and to say that that candidate, Joe Biden, you know, when I ran for U.S. president, right,

01:15:02.580 the pledge we had to sign to be on the debate stage was called the Beat Biden Pledge.

01:15:07.160 And I told the then chairwoman of the Republican Party, I thought this was a silly idea,

01:15:10.540 because we're not running against Joe Biden.

01:15:12.900 So why are we framing our entire Republican primary endeavor in the context of beating Joe Biden?

01:15:18.760 In the very practical sense that I didn't think we were going to run against Joe Biden or not.

01:15:21.780 But even in the deeper philosophical sense that why don't we focus on what alternative vision

01:15:25.340 we actually have to offer to the people?

01:15:27.560 So I think that's a trap that Republicans would fall into.

01:15:29.600 Now, again, with Kamala to say that, OK, here's everything that's wrong with Kamala Harris.

01:15:32.300 When, in fact, that misses the point that she's just another cog in the system.

01:15:35.520 We're not running against a candidate.

01:15:36.920 We're running against a machine.

01:15:38.320 And I think we have to understand that.

01:15:39.520 So that is where I think you see a lot of the common threads between folks like, you know,

01:15:44.020 myself to RFK to Donald Trump to Tulsi.

01:15:48.580 We have divergences between us to other more historically traditional Republican conservatives.

01:15:54.200 There'll be shades of difference on individual policy questions,

01:15:56.540 on the merits of one form of, you know, regulation or policymaking or other.

01:16:01.580 But what we do represent and share in common is a hostility to the managerial class,

01:16:08.720 the managerial administration of America by, I would say, people who are never elected

01:16:14.740 to their positions, the people who we elect to run the government from Kamala Harris to

01:16:17.920 Joe Biden or anybody else.

01:16:19.480 They're not the ones actually running the government.

01:16:21.360 It is a managerial machine of which they're just a part.

01:16:24.080 That really is the divide.

01:16:25.340 And I think that's what we're seeing.

01:16:26.500 Well, it's also strange.

01:16:28.600 It's so strange that it's the conservative Republicans that have found themselves in

01:16:34.660 opposition to the managerial class because logically it should be that the conservatives

01:16:41.300 are the supporters of the managerial and administrative class.

01:16:44.420 I think there have been points in history where that's been true, no doubt about it.

01:16:47.460 But I think that I think that that's where, you know, the word, these words change their

01:16:51.600 valence and meaning over time.

01:16:53.040 Yeah, yeah, right.

01:16:53.960 You know, the managerial class, I don't use the term the elites really as much as some

01:16:58.760 of my other friends on the right do, because I think that I'm an elite.

01:17:03.040 Elon Musk is an elite, you know, by any, by certain definitions, founders.

01:17:06.120 I think there's a different categorization I would offer between the everyday citizen,

01:17:11.220 the creators and then this managerial intermediary class, the bureaucrat class, the committee

01:17:16.600 class.

01:17:17.500 And I think there's always a balance of power between all three and maybe some element of

01:17:20.440 all three is always required in a well-functioning society.

01:17:22.820 But right now we live in a moment where that balance of power has shifted too heavily in

01:17:27.840 favor of the managerial committee class and not just in government, but in universities

01:17:32.560 and companies, in nonprofits, in any institution.

01:17:36.060 And I think now is a moment we live in where creators are able to ally with everyday citizens

01:17:40.360 to be able to drive real change.

01:17:42.500 And so that's, you know, I'm a creator by background.

01:17:44.700 That's what led me to run for U.S. president.

01:17:47.040 Donald Trump, Elon Musk, very similar backgrounds as creators who are allied with the everyday

01:17:52.520 citizen to overthrow, in some sense, the managerial class that has a lot of our modern culture

01:17:58.600 and certainly our modern government in a chokehold.

01:18:01.240 And so that's what motivated me to run in the first place.

01:18:03.080 I think it's a common thread that you could connect for some of the other characters you

01:18:07.620 just mentioned.

01:18:08.240 And, you know, for my part, look, I've enjoyed my presidential run immensely.

01:18:14.320 I was the experience of a lifetime.

01:18:16.560 I grew in ways that I would not have but for doing that one thing.

01:18:20.540 I do believe in, you know, for all the things that I could blame for why I didn't achieve

01:18:26.880 the ultimate goal.

01:18:28.020 I'm grateful that I, as somebody who was relatively unknown at the start of it, I beat multiple

01:18:34.680 former and current senators and governors and a former vice president along the way.

01:18:39.280 And so I'm satisfied with how we did.

01:18:41.740 But at the same time, I didn't achieve the goal of assuming the presidency.

01:18:45.860 And I tell my kids the same thing.

01:18:48.000 So I'll follow the advice myself.

01:18:49.640 The number one factor that is most determinative of what you achieve in life is you.

01:18:55.820 It's not the only factor that matters, but it's the number one factor.

01:18:58.220 And there are some things that I think I could have done better.

01:19:01.580 I think a lot of my former colleagues, people I've worked with, employees of mine, close

01:19:08.080 friends, family members, I think one of the things that they were most frustrated by, and

01:19:11.820 they tell me this, and I appreciate that, is that they're frustrated that they feel like

01:19:16.900 the public did not get to see the full me that they know.

01:19:20.520 I think that part of what happened in the process of running for president, and it was

01:19:25.560 unavoidable this time around, and I don't say I have any regrets considering the result

01:19:29.040 that I achieved, but if I was to still take some reflections and learning from it, I took

01:19:35.040 the approach that if you hit me, I'm going to hit you back 10 times harder.

01:19:37.640 I don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat.

01:19:40.260 That was just my approach.

01:19:41.900 And because I had been in a position where in the world of business, it doesn't happen

01:19:45.040 to you in quite the same way.

01:19:46.980 But when I started to become ascendant, it was a level of attack, right, a deeply personal

01:19:53.220 attack on me from 10 different angles, that that was the way I dealt with it, was to say,

01:19:58.020 well, I will one by one hit you back 10 times harder, and that's how I'm going to do this.

01:20:02.200 And that is part of me.

01:20:03.740 I'm a fighter.

01:20:04.300 I'm a competitor, but it's not all of me.

01:20:06.740 And I think that one of the challenges, but if you're going to lead the free world,

01:20:10.720 you better be up for that challenge at the highest level, is to show the people that you

01:20:15.700 are a fighter, but while also finding ways to really allow 300 million people who don't

01:20:22.680 otherwise know you to really get to know what's in your heart beyond just your ability to fight.

01:20:28.700 And that is, I think, where I left some room on the table over the campaign that I think is

01:20:36.320 probably one of my great learnings.

01:20:37.800 Okay, well, you alluded to the fact that you learned a lot at, well, as you should have,

01:20:43.720 while undertaking this endeavor.

01:20:45.380 And the overall effect of that still remains to be determined because you're a young man

01:20:50.780 and God only knows what's open to you in the future.

01:20:53.100 But, well, in terms of growth on the wisdom side, you just, you know, you alluded to the

01:21:01.020 fact that you feel that you might have been too combative.

01:21:04.380 You know, I've noticed this with the new leader of the Conservative Party in Canada, Pierre

01:21:10.100 Pauliev, and he's in all likelihood going to be the next prime minister.

01:21:14.120 He's cataclysmically far ahead in the polls at the moment, and it looks like Trudeau and

01:21:19.880 his minions and the socialists along with them are going to be devastated in Canada when

01:21:25.180 the next election emerges.

01:21:26.960 Now, Pauliev is a scrappy guy.

01:21:30.120 He's not particularly agreeable in the temperamental sense.

01:21:34.840 He's more of a competitor and a fighter.

01:21:36.760 And that served him very well as a member of the opposition when his fundamental goal

01:21:42.280 was the criticism, let's say, of the Trudeau government or lack thereof.

01:21:48.720 But when he transformed into the leader of the Conservative Party and now the putative prime

01:21:55.120 minister, his role has to shift, right?

01:21:57.780 He has to become more of a statesman.

01:22:00.560 He has to be less impulsive and reactive.

01:22:04.280 Now, I mean, it's a tricky thing to manage, right?

01:22:06.220 Because, you know, you had to demonstrate that you could fight back and land your own blows,

01:22:14.160 you know?

01:22:14.360 And I saw that you were quite effective at that, for example, at the convention speeches

01:22:19.360 and publicly.

01:22:20.760 So, what do you think you learned in terms of maturity, let's say?

01:22:26.880 How did you learn to regulate your proclivity to be scrappy?

01:22:31.420 And how do you see your book, let's say?

01:22:35.120 Like, your book seems to be a manifestation of that desire to, rather than react, to provide

01:22:41.920 something more closely approximating a well-developed vision.

01:22:45.260 So, walk us through how you think you've changed.

01:22:48.980 I'm particularly interested in changes that would be indicative of an expanded maturity.

01:22:53.960 Because, you know, you went through quite the mill and a series of very, what, deep challenges

01:23:00.820 and complex situations that you had to negotiate.

01:23:04.620 And so, I'm very curious about how you think this has changed you, and maybe for the better

01:23:09.800 and even possibly for the worse, because it's also not that straightforward to withstand

01:23:15.460 all those slings and arrows, for example, without, you know, that having some potentially

01:23:22.320 detrimental effect on your...

01:23:24.760 Pennsylvania's future hangs in the balance.

01:23:26.880 And here's a fact that might surprise you.

01:23:28.780 Pennsylvania has nearly two million conservatives who don't vote.

01:23:31.700 That's almost one out of every five people you know.

01:23:34.620 But there is something you can do about it.

01:23:36.880 Take 10 to 15 minutes and make a real difference in Pennsylvania's future.

01:23:40.460 How, you might ask?

01:23:41.360 By identifying friends, family, co-workers, and fellow church members who aren't planning

01:23:45.660 on exercising their right to vote.

01:23:47.800 Many people are shocked to discover non-voters among their own family members or in their church

01:23:52.100 communities.

01:23:53.040 These are voices that could be heard, but aren't.

01:23:55.400 The best part is the effort costs nothing but a few minutes of your time.

01:23:58.420 And those few minutes could help shape the future of the state and our country.

01:24:02.660 It's a simple process.

01:24:03.620 Visit 10xvotes.com and use their easy tools to find non-voting conservatives in your circle.

01:24:09.160 That's 10xvotes.com.

01:24:11.840 Don't wait.

01:24:12.420 Go to 10xvotes.com, get your 10, and help us win.

01:24:15.660 Remember, it costs nothing, takes just a few minutes, and you can play a crucial role in

01:24:19.740 Pennsylvania's future.

01:24:21.100 Head over to 10xvotes.com today.

01:24:23.740 Yeah.

01:24:24.580 What would you say?

01:24:25.780 It's easy to become resentful, for example.

01:24:27.680 It could be.

01:24:28.520 It is.

01:24:29.040 I think I've gone through a few phases of that, but I think with the benefit of some

01:24:34.940 distance, I think I have greater clarity.

01:24:37.560 So I actually, the first thing I would say is I'm not sure that even if I was to go back

01:24:43.400 in time to January 2023 and go through the whole thing again, that I, in the situation

01:24:50.800 I was in, would do it too much differently than I did, in a certain sense.

01:24:56.180 It kind of had to be the way it was.

01:24:58.620 It's just the way that things were ordered.

01:25:00.000 Because let's say I had started with, I mean, I do have a different vision for what the future

01:25:05.500 of the conservative movement ought to be, the future of the country ought to be.

01:25:08.400 It's an alternative vision, not a reactionary one.

01:25:10.200 That's what I started with last year.

01:25:11.740 But if I just remained in that territory as a guy who's unknown, coming from nowhere in

01:25:15.360 a media landscape, reaching 330 million people, it would have gone nowhere.

01:25:19.140 I would have never even been on that debate stage in the first place.

01:25:22.420 And I think people do want someone in the commander-in-chief role and require it's part

01:25:26.700 of why Donald Trump got there the first time and is back there again now, who can level

01:25:31.180 with the fire, with fighting fire, with fire.

01:25:34.740 But I think you've got to, it's an and.

01:25:36.540 So it's not so much that my lesson is that it would be to be less pugnacious when necessary.

01:25:41.040 I think you've got to have that in the arsenal to the fullest extent possible.

01:25:45.660 So it's not taking that 10 on a scale of 10 and dialing that back to a 6.

01:25:49.960 But I think it is to make sure that I'm using my full arsenal of modes that we are going

01:25:56.260 to require to both fight evil, fight wrong where we confront it, but also to find grace

01:26:04.360 and to deliver unity where we require it too.

01:26:08.340 And so I think that is, I think that was, I think my bigger learning is the ability to,

01:26:13.000 and I have it in my heart and when I've led a company, I've found that to be much easier

01:26:16.140 to do.

01:26:16.740 It's a much easier task by comparison to running for U.S.

01:26:20.280 president and leading a nation.

01:26:21.980 But one of the things I learned is in that, in this context too, it's just as important

01:26:26.120 in the same way that when you would lead a company in a group of people, there are times

01:26:29.960 you've got to be tough, there are times you have to be empathic, there are times you have

01:26:34.180 to be understanding, there are times you have to revisit your own most closely held

01:26:37.780 assumptions for the betterment of the company as a whole.

01:26:41.240 I think it would be actually taking some of those lessons and transposing those in the

01:26:44.940 way that I would run a campaign and lead a country.

01:26:46.700 It's not just the fighter mode, but you're going to have to bring out some of those other

01:26:50.440 modes as well.

01:26:51.620 And so that's, I think, one big learning.

01:26:53.320 Well, you seem to be doing that with the book, right?

01:26:55.400 And no way to write writing was, and just the benefit of distance and reflection and

01:27:00.620 writing.

01:27:01.360 And yes, I think this book was an important part of my journey as well to marshal those

01:27:05.540 lessons for whatever that next step is.

01:27:07.980 And tactically, there's a few next steps for me and I'm not, you know, one of the things

01:27:12.420 I've learned in my life is if you plot out your own career path or your own next steps

01:27:17.500 with a very inward looking attitude to yourself, it never goes according to your plan anyway.

01:27:22.200 For me, it certainly hasn't.

01:27:23.480 But at the moments where I've been called by a true purpose and guided by a true purpose,

01:27:30.860 the plan, I have confidence, will reveal itself.

01:27:34.220 It always has.

01:27:36.060 And, you know, I think very practically, you talk about learnings from the last year.

01:27:40.640 Some of this is, you know, not just philosophical.

01:27:42.680 Some of this is very practical.

01:27:44.140 Here's some things I actually would have done differently.

01:27:46.120 Heading into the first debate, I would have taken two weeks off, actually.

01:27:49.720 I was in nine states in the seven days leading up to the first presidential debate.

01:27:55.000 In retrospect, that was crazy.

01:27:56.300 First of all, I was speaking very fluidly 24-7 for those days in nine different states,

01:28:02.160 which provided a lot of fodder for, you know, freewheeling quotes that I'm delivering to be

01:28:07.480 airlifted on the debate stage in ways that, you know, was just tactically probably not a good

01:28:12.560 position to put myself in.

01:28:13.500 But I think even just in terms of my own mental and spiritual readiness to enter that

01:28:20.840 next phase of the campaign, I didn't take enough moments to reconnect myself with the

01:28:27.940 original purpose in just the day-to-day of going 24-7.

01:28:31.300 That almost fed the competitive spirit.

01:28:34.260 You're driven by momentum.

01:28:35.200 You're driven by speed.

01:28:36.300 That's consistent with, okay, you hit me back.

01:28:38.840 I'm going to hit you back 10 times harder.

01:28:40.160 All of that went together versus, yes, I need to be able to turn that mode on when we need

01:28:45.260 to, to fight for the right cause.

01:28:47.340 But I think that even very tactically, if I had taken a couple, up to a couple hours a

01:28:52.100 day, that's a lot.

01:28:53.120 I didn't do this.

01:28:53.980 But a couple hours a day of free-form writing, reflection, meditation, you know, I did spend

01:29:00.900 a lot of time with my family, but it was still in the context of what felt like a whirlwind,

01:29:05.620 but instead actually disconnected time with my family.

01:29:10.280 I think the combination of those things and even taking longer stretches than just two

01:29:14.620 hours in a day, but even a week or two before an important inflection point, like a first

01:29:20.300 presidential debate, to be able to allow 300 million people to see who you really are

01:29:26.100 in front.

01:29:26.600 Right, right, right.

01:29:27.420 So that would have enabled you to, as you said, to reconnect with the fundamental orienting

01:29:33.200 principles that had impelled you.

01:29:34.860 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see, I see.

01:29:36.800 All right, so I think we'll bring this section of our discussion to a close.

01:29:41.300 For everybody that's watching and listening, I'm going to speak with Vivek for at least

01:29:45.460 another 20 minutes on the Daily Wire side.

01:29:47.800 And I think what we'll do there is twofold.

01:29:50.160 We're going to continue our conversation about Vivek's analysis of Trump's current situation,

01:29:58.320 especially in relationship to the people that have come to his side, let's say, in the last

01:30:04.240 couple of weeks.

01:30:04.920 But I also want to talk to Vivek about his thoughts about his role in the conservative

01:30:11.080 movement, theoretically and practically, in the months and years that are ahead of us.

01:30:17.320 And so if all of you who are watching and listening or some of you want to join us on the Daily

01:30:21.520 Wire side, that's what we're going to do.

01:30:23.260 And so Vivek, thank you very much for talking to me, while all the multiple times that you

01:30:28.020 have.

01:30:29.800 Just to recap here, we discussed a lot of today, we discussed your book, Truths, coming

01:30:34.660 out September 24th, The Future of America First.

01:30:38.240 And so that was very enlightening.

01:30:40.920 And I can see you elaborating this vision and seeing you lay the groundwork for the future

01:30:46.660 in exactly that manner.

01:30:47.780 So that's a very cool thing to see.

01:30:49.200 And thank you as well for walking us through your experiences on the campaign trail.

01:30:55.140 And well, because you did that a number of times on the podcast, which was extremely

01:30:59.140 interesting.

01:30:59.740 And it's nice to get this kind of closure.

01:31:01.720 And so I want to thank you for all that on my behalf and on behalf of my listeners.

01:31:07.120 And then, well, we'll continue our discussion on the Daily Wire side.

01:31:11.220 Thank you very much, sir.

01:31:12.340 And to everybody watching and listening, thank you for your time and attention.

01:31:16.140 Thank you.

01:31:19.200 Pennsylvania's future hangs in the balance.

01:31:29.900 And here's a fact that might surprise you.

01:31:31.800 Pennsylvania has nearly 2 million conservatives who don't vote.

01:31:34.900 That's almost one out of every five people you know.

01:31:37.580 But there is something you can do about it.

01:31:39.880 Take 10 to 15 minutes and make a real difference in Pennsylvania's future.

01:31:43.380 How, you might ask?

01:31:44.240 By identifying friends, family, co-workers, and fellow church members who aren't planning

01:31:48.660 on exercising their right to vote.

01:31:50.800 Many people are shocked to discover non-voters among their own family members or in their

01:31:54.860 church communities.

01:31:56.040 These are voices that could be heard, but aren't.

01:31:58.400 The best part is the effort costs nothing but a few minutes of your time.

01:32:01.720 And those few minutes could help shape the future of the state and our country.

01:32:05.600 It's a simple process.

01:32:06.580 Visit 10xvotes.com and use their easy tools to find non-voting conservatives in your circle.

01:32:12.160 That's 10xvotes.com.

01:32:14.840 Don't wait.

01:32:15.420 Go to 10xvotes.com, get your 10, and help us win.

01:32:18.680 Remember, it costs nothing, takes just a few minutes, and you can play a crucial role in

01:32:22.740 Pennsylvania's future.

01:32:24.100 Head over to 10xvotes.com today.

01:32:26.240 10xvotes.com.

01:32:26.460 Head over to 10xvotes. 6xvotes.com.

01:32:32.040 7xvotes.com.

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01:32:44.620 11.e.

01:32:45.020 lexote.com.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - September 16, 2024

481. 10 Disruptive Truths ｜ Vivek Ramaswamy

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